A national apology will not make up for lost years

For over 20 years, Carmel Ward has been playing a waiting game - hoping for a connection.

Twice a year, the 63-year-old Duncraig resident carefully drafts and re-drafts a letter, a gentle reminder of unconditional love, to her long lost son.

"Snail mail is my link and I'm very grateful that he doesn't return to sender," she said.

Mrs Ward is one of the tens of thousands of unmarried women across Australia who were forced or coerced into giving up their babies for adoption between the 1950s and 70s.

Every birthday and Christmas for the past two decades, she's slipped a card and letter into the post box, with a twinge of anxiety, hoping they will trigger a reply from her son, now aged 41, who lives interstate.

"It relieves some of the isolation that I can write," she said.

"I just hope and pray that at some stage in his life, he will open his heart and contact me."

Brought up in country WA, Carmel Ward was sent away to live with her grandmother in South Australia after discovering she was pregnant at 21.

"It was not acceptable to the family for me to be an unwed, single mother," she said.

"It was all meant to be secret and certainly as the pregnancy advanced, there were words like "you'll be able to forget this and get on with your life."

During the pregnancy, she says she was groomed into believing that adoption was the only option.

The pressure continued as she found herself preparing to give birth, alone and confused, at a hospital in country South Australia.

A defining comment from a social worker still rings in her ears.

"Her advice to me was get a wedding ring and that way you won't upset the other ladies in the hospital."

"There were things said like, "If you really love your baby, you'll let it be raised by a family, a good married couple."

Carmel Ward loved her baby but society had judged her.

Crucially, she was denied access to vital information about the adoption process that could have changed the outcome.